I have been at Corban for less than a year and already have to contemplate leaving this glorious cocoon. Though, I am skeptical whether I will leave a butterfly ready to fly away, or one with agoraphobia, longing for the comfort of the familiar, asbestos filled halls.
As a junior transfer, I am forced to think about the future. In a year I will be preparing for graduation, preparing for my last hoorays before I officially grow up. But like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, I don’t want to.
I still sing the Toys-R-Us song and call my mother “Mommy.” I am not ready to graduate, not ready to take responsibility, not ready to pay back my student loans.
College is supposed to make students more mature, but my time here has been spent like a 12-year-old boy, playing pranks, staying up too late, and doing homework only when it fits into my packed schedule.
I don’t want to think about life after college. I don’t want wrinkles, I don’t want hernias, or, heaven-forbid, spider veins. I want to stay here and listen to Hills, Wilson and McGinnis forever. I want to talk with Ellen Kersey about her time in Australia and complain about Aramark for at least ten more years.
I want my friends to stay my friends; I don’t want them to grow up, either. They are not allowed to marry or have children. They must continue as they are. We must stay together and make more precious memories.
Graduate school is lurking, but I am trying to avoid it. I can’t bring myself to even research them. I know I should, but if I do, I will have officially moved on. I cannot.
I push the future out of my mind for the thousandth time and focus on the present. I turn up the ridiculous Avril Lavigne song playing on Pandora and sing at the top of my lungs. I am young and tone deaf, and I like it.
I am too young to be thinking about these things, too immature to be contemplating the next five years. I hate when people talk about marriage, about five-year plans and moving forward. I would be contented to stay in neutral.
Knowing that I cannot is half of the problem. Wanting what I can’t have comes naturally, though it frustrates me to no end.
I feel punchy, somehow off. I realize why: my mind is reconciling itself to the loss it will face next year.
No more Hills, no more pranks, no more Corban security blanket. For all its faults, for all the frustrations, for all the irritations, I will miss it.
At least I will never be too old to call my mother “Mommy.”